I think everyone knows about iMessage, notably the blue chat bubble that appears when messaging between Apple products. Well, there was a bit of drama that directly led to the Department of Justice suing Apple. But wait.. there’s more…
In December of last year, an app called “Beeper” found a way to reverse engineer how Apple’s iMessage worked so that it could work on Android devices.
Apple didn’t like this.
What did Apple do? They found out how Beeper pulled it off and changed the code to break Beeper’s functionality. It then became a game of cat-and-mouse, as Beeper found ways to get it working again, while Apple was right behind disabling it. Like a game of whack-a-mole.
Apple ultimately won.
That is… until the Department of Justice noticed and sued Apple.
The DOJ cited in their antitrust lawsuit, “By rejecting solutions that would allow for cross-platform encryption, Apple continues to make iPhone users’ less secure than they could otherwise be.” The FCC is also investigating Apple’s actions with the FCC rules on accessibility, usability, and compatibility.
The theme behind all of this is that Apple is protecting its smartphone “monopoly” in part by preventing cross-platform messaging with rival smartphones.
The lawsuit even goes as far as to say that Apple “copied the idea of a smartwatch from third-party developers.”
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In a recent development, Automattic, the owner of WordPress, acquired Beeper for $125 million. They made a statement saying that the future of messaging will be open source and work across services and devices.
I’d like to hope so.
